


A Dream Upon Waking

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Angst, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Heartbreak, Hurt, Love, Make up kiss, One Shot, Price of Salt - Freeform, Short Story, carol/therese - Freeform, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 10:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15817503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: Therese suffers the abandonment of Carol in her own way, sometimes as though she is haunted. . .  a bit of an au ending/ or variation on a theme. . .





	A Dream Upon Waking

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Sorry I've been away for so long. . . This little nugget may seem repetitive, pointless, or contrary to the actual end of the book/movie, but it was a little thing that popped up in my mind and I had some imagery I just wanted to play around with. Also, for those who might be new to my Carol/Price of Salt work, please note that I take a lot more of my cues from the actual novel by Highsmith, as opposed to the movie, although I do love both. So, some of the details in here I have merged between book and movie, which I hope isn't too weird for you.
> 
> I hope you will stop by in the comments to let me know how you are and what you think! You know I love this fandom so very much, and I absolutely look forward to hearing from all of you lovely souls out there in Carol-Land. Thank you so much for taking the time to read. xoxoxo.

It does not take a ghost to haunt.

Our minds can do a nifty enough job of that all on their own.

Without rhyme or reason, they can drag us back through time and space into boneyards of memory where we have no business or desire to be.

That’s how it is when I dream of her.

She is under heaps of soil in my subconscious, and yet she is there all the same. She waits for me and finds me when I am unsuspecting, when the grave has been uncovered and our skeletons shine bright in the moon.

They come without any warning, the dreams, and seem to bear the same weight out across the bones of my chest as I sleep, even as they differ in thematic material.

I watch her tuck her feet up under her and smile as she leans back against the bed.

I feel her press her shoulder up close to mine in an elevator as we ride up and up and up to someplace presumably splendid.

Always, I’m smiling.

She slides a emerald, silk scarf off her neck in a ravishingly slow motion.

I grab the inside of her wrist and hold it in my own fist and we stand, frozen in time feeling nothing or everything as her pulse finds mine and we match one another.

She tilts her head to the side and smiles with her entire face so her eyes crinkle.

I taste bourbon on her lips and hear her throaty laugh.

She strokes my cheek with her knuckles.

There is little actual conversation, but when we do talk, it is casual and kind. She says things like, “Would you like to go to the zoo today, Therese?” Or she says, “I like to just watch you work.” They are small words no one would believe make me wake and weep until the very landscape of my face shifts, becomes puffed up like the world before or after a storm.

Morning comes and heaves earth back over us in haste as my eyes open to the sun and I’m lifted back to the living. I grope at the moss of my sleep, trying to remember and make sense of what I saw and heard and felt.

It is torture to forget.

Part of my brain ticks off days, even as I live them without thinking I am living a life without Carol; I am existing in a world in which she exists for me only in one dimension, in black and white. Like a prisoner, I try not to think about all the days before or after because the weight of them is infinite and crushing, much like the dreams. I begin the day with coffee and end it with beer and in between I go to work. On the weekends I take my photos and make my sketches and share a brunch or supper or a show with friends. To them, I am no different than I was before her. To me, I am irrevocably altered. This split reality might be the most bizarre aspect of my life now- that I can live so deeply buried by such a profound grief, and yet walk among the living in the sun. At times it makes such little sense to me it literally takes my breath away and I double over, gasping until my face is wet with tears and the crying comes.

There are times I’ll go a few weeks without a dream and the pain seems to lessen. It’s as though she seeps from my pores and I am free. I almost forget to feel caged by loss and longing for her. Then I remember I have not dreamed, and my bereavement begins anew. I crave contact with her, even if it is only on the blurred boundaries of my subconscious. But I cannot command my mind to fly to her, to conjure her visage to suite my craving.

Only one photograph of the two of us exists. I can look you in the eye and tell you I never drag it out from where it is hidden in the creases of a Bille Holiday album at the bottom of a stack of records in my living room. I can look you straight in the eye and tell you I never exhume it from its resting place and stare at it for long moments. I can say I haven’t held it so long, and so often that the oil from my fingertips have not made imperfections in the photo’s sheen. I can also state with confidence that there is no blur on the upper left hand corner of the picture from sloppy tears that dropped from my own eyes with a quiet thump onto it.

I can tell you all of this because living the dual existence of grief makes me an excellent liar.

We were in the booth of a restaurant somewhere out West. I’d been taking shots of her and she’d been in a mood to oblige me with sultry and silly faces over her martini glass. “Oh, I wish we could get one of the two of us,” she said. “Do you think we could ask someone? The waiter perhaps?”

“Come here,” I said. She looked confused so I repeated my request and patted the seat on the bench beside me. She slipped over to my side of the booth. “Here, get close,” I said and held the camera up and pointed it at us.

“Will that work?” She asked in a voice that sounded amazed and amused all at once.

“It should. Now smile.” I started to count to three and smiled, but at the last moment, she turned and pressed her lips to my cheek.

That’s the image I have now. Carol, with her eyes closed, lips pressed against my cheek and me, my happy smile turned into a surprised grin. We are off center and close up, caught there on that rectangle of paper, for all time.

We go to our graves, many of us, without answers, and so I do not ask why she did it, why she left me there and why she never spoke to me again. During my days of wandering before I returned to New York, I tried to fill in the blanks, but I gave up trying to make sense of it soon after I came home. It exhausts me to repress those questions, to keep them soundly stuffed under the topsoil of our headstone.

My new project keeps me busy. I daresay I almost enjoy it. When I’m in the theater it hardly seems I’m leading two lives, because the theater is a place where duality is sanctioned, both on stage and off. The director of the show seems to appreciate my input and I’m becoming bolder in my choice of words. Some nights I go home and smile a little to myself and think about the things I’ve said and how I’ve been received and I think how Carol would hardly recognize me now. What would she say about my short hair and the way I readily express disagreement on a particular aspect of the show’s design? Would she ever guess I could be so brazen? I work as much and as late as I can.

The job pays better than my others. I haven’t been able to move yet, but I bought myself a few new things. I bought myself a fine winter coat in a rich fawn color, and I also purchased a silk dress. The dress is a deep, plum and it is cut in a sharp style that takes me some getting used to, as it is far more mature than my woolen skirts and sweaters.

I wear the dress to the party. I like how it matches the glass of wine I hold, and how one of the actresses there tells me it brings out my eyes.

At times like this I can’t help but wonder what Carol would think of me, how she’d look at me and if she’d say something outright, or if she’d save her observation for later when we were alone. Would she whisper her sentiment in my ear as she laid her body on top of mine? That would be so like her. I could imagine her watching me move around all night in that dress, only to get me out of it and then tell me what she thought as her hair brushed over the skin of my breast and belly and she wrote her opinion over me with her lips and tongue.

These thoughts make me shiver. I shouldn’t be thinking them, but I do.

My eyes cast down and watch the ripples in my wine as my hand shakes.

I hear her voice before I see her and for a moment I think I am going mad. It’s been months since we have had any contact outside of my sleep. The party I’m at is for the play I’m helping design the set for and if doesn’t make any sense that she would be here, except as a manifestation of my imagination gone wild. But it’s her laugh, make no mistake. I hear it and it is real and then I feel like I’m going mad in a whole different way. The drink in my hand sloshes over the rim of the glass and onto my hand and dress and the floor as I spin around, searching. She’s there. Across the room, chatting up a pair of actors. She catches my eye at about the same time and brazenly excuses herself from her conversation to approach me.

“Well, well,” she says. “How do you do, Therese?”

“What are you doing here?” I hiss. My heart beats frantically.

She takes a cigarette out and offers one to me. I shake my head brusquely and she shrugs and lights hers. “The director is a good friend of mine. I had no idea you would be here. I’m sorry if my presence has upset you.”

“I’ve designed the sets for the first and third acts,” I say. My tone is a blend of clipped pride.

“Oh, Therese! How wonderful for you! My, how you’ve arrived! Congratulations.”

“Yes. Thank you,” I say. She seems genuinely pleased for me. Her face looks thin, but glad and she’s wrapped in a royal blue dress that accentuates both the curves of her waist and the color of her eyes.

“Therese,” she says. “How have you been otherwise?”

“I’m fine,” I say and my voice starts to waver. I set my glass on the nearest table, suddenly cognizant of the dark stain that has settled on the fabric of my dress. I try to cover it with my hands. “Actually, I was just leaving. So, goodnight.” I turn and start to walk down the hall toward the room where my coat is, but I feel her following me. I feel her hand on my elbow.

“Therese,” she says. “Do you just hate me now? All these months and it seems I can feel your anger across the entire city.”

I pivot and face her. “You’re wrong. I’m not angry. And I’ve never hated you.” She stands there looking at me, waiting for me to say more. “How would you know what I feel? If I’m angry or anything? You walked away from me and never looked back! How dare you make any presumptions about what I feel?” I yank my arm from her.

“I suppose that is fair,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

“How could you?” I ask. They are not the words I want to say, but they are the only words I own at this moment in time.

A yellow ribbon of her hair slips in front of her cornflower blue eye. “I really couldn’t,” she whispers in that low, smoky, hoarse way. She shakes the lock off her face and it is a gesture that is so familiar and yet its been so long since I’ve witnessed it. It almost breaks me. I cross my arms over my chest to try and keep myself held together, in one piece. “But it was the only thing I knew to do.” She reaches out and strokes my cheek with her knuckles. To my surprise, I neither flinch or wince, but find myself leaning my head against her hand. She opens her palm and cups my face.

“Carol,” I breathe, if only to say her name.

“Therese, will you let me explain? You can walk away and you can despise me or be angry or feel whatever you feel and never acknowledge me again, but please allow me to explain, and please know I am sorry.”

“All right,” I say. She leads me to a sofa and we sit down.

She touches my arm briefly. “So pale,” she whispers and then inhales. “Years ago, after Abby, Harge and my family, well, they were rabid. This was before Rindy was born so they had no leverage on me with her, but they threatened to destroy not just my reputation but also Abby’s. Eventually, they let it go and then Rindy was born and parenthood sort of appeased Harge.”

“What does this have to do with me,” I snap.

“I was scared. When I returned, Harge was on the warpath and I was so frightened he would try to find you and ruin you too. It was the best I could do to walk the other way. Do you see?” She seems to be looking at me in a manner that could best be described as beseeching, but I’m not quite certain what to do with it. So, I sit there and stare at her, collecting the familiar and somehow unfamiliar features of her with my eyes so I might have them to remember later. “No, I don’t suppose you would see, would you,” she huffs at last, perhaps a bit frustrated by my silence.

“I don’t know what to say,” I whisper.

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that. So indifferent. How very cold you’ve grown.”

“Cold? Of course I’m cold! I’m partly dead inside! You killed me, or a part of me anyway- the part of me that felt and loved and was warm. Aren’t all dead things cold, Carol?”

“Oh, Therese, my sweet,” she breathes and clutches my hands in hers. “I love you. I do so love you, Therese. Won’t you allow me to breathe life and warmth back into you?”

“Why? So you can leave me again?” I yelp and realize suddenly I’m sobbing. She shushes me and holds my body to hers. She puts her hand on the back of my neck and I feel her fingers in my hair, cradling my head. After a while she holds me at arms length. She looks at me with a strange mix of emotion on her face I can’t quite read.

“I am sorry,” she says softly.

“Yes. You said that,” I sniffle.

“Petulant little darling,” she chuckles.

“I apologize; that was harsh.”

“No. No. I deserved that.” She produces a handkerchief and dabs at my eyes. My body slouches, limply against hers. She puts a hand on my thigh and rubs it in that old, familiar, way of comfort. “This is a pretty dress,” she murmurs.

“Thanks.”

“When I first saw you, you quite took my breath away, with this new dress and glamorous haircut. You know, I dream of you, but you never look like this.”

“You dream of me?” I ask.

“Oh, yes. All the time. I can never decide if they are a blessing or a curse, the dreams. I wake from them and it is as though I’ve been visited by a ghost or something, I don’t know. I suppose that sounds ridiculous.” She says.

“It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all.” I say.

“And now,” she says in a breathy whisper. “Here you are. So close to me. It feels almost unreal, but not like a dream at all. So very strange.”

“Yes,” I swallow the last of my tears. Her hands are on my face and her breath is on my face and her eyes are all I see before I close my eyes to darkness and allow my lips to be found by hers. She seems at first tentative, holding back, but as the warmth flows between us the kiss deepens naturally. I find her waist with my hands and hold it. She’s cupping my face and pulling me in closer and I don’t remember a kiss like this in any of my dreams or ever before. It tastes of wine and salt and smoke and it smells of Carol’s shampoo and perfume. I feel her. Carol, in my arms, real and not a ghost at all.

“Will you forgive me?” She whispers in a nuzzle against my cheek.

“Yes,” I sigh, and if feels good and right to say it, but it feels even better to drag my lips over her face until they mask her mouth and we breathlessly breathe the same breath that we are stealing over and over from one another.

“Will you love me again?” She asks.

“Carol, I love you. I never stopped loving you,” I speak, my lips against hers.

From this dream I need not wake, for I am not asleep.

From this death I need not rise, for into my body the breath of life floods once again.


End file.
